Workmen's advocate., 1887-03-26
FOUR HOURS A DAY IF EVERY ONE DID HIS SHARE
 OF WORK. Hu#
Machinery's Aid-FOOd Wasted and People Starying-Planless Pro. ductiOn-NO Excuse for
 Misery - The Turn
 ing Point.

It IS now about a century since Benjamln Franklin declared that four hours work day would be sufficient to produce all that is nec- essary for the support of mankind, if everybody would perform his share of such work. In the century elapsed since Franklin's time the productive forces of mankind hare so wonderfully increased that what, at that time, was a bold assertion, is now truth which is self-evident, incontrovertible and fully demon strable.
 In the first place, the working forces outside of human muscles have been multiplied ten-fold. Ma chimes have been multiplied and improved to such a degree that re- cent statistical record estimated the working force added by steam ma chinery alone as amounting to ten times the muscular force of all liv- ing persons. And since half of mankind or more do not yet employ steam power machinery, it may be asserted that the remaining half who employ it; have each twenty ''iron slaves to help them at work. Nor Is this an exaggeration. Carrol D. Wright, our United States Labor Commissioner, stated in his last re- port to Congress that inquiries among the employers of labor have been answered to the effect that in almost all mechanical trades the working force has, within few de- cades, been increased from three fold to twenty-fold by machinery and new technical inventions. Even in agriculture the same holds true. The great bonanza farms of our far West report crops ten-fold larger produced by the aid of machinery and production on large scale than is possible without such aids. Every year there is more food wasted than would suffice to appease the hunger of all the famishing men in the world. Cattle are perishing of cold and hunger by the hundred thous- and, and bread fruit is burned in- stead of other fuel, or converted into glucose, starch, alcohol, etc., at an enormous rate. We know now that articles of human food may be mul- tiplled at more rapid rate than population.
 Yet all the wonders of the present productive force of mankind seem to be insignificant in comparison with what inventions and discover ies may yet do for the better support of mankind.
 There is, therefore, no excuse for the existence and continuance of human misery. It is the greatest disgrace for our inventive and en- frightened age that more persons able and willing to work for a livelihood perish or die of slow starvation from year to year, and that in fact, all our material and scientific progress seems to have but increased the amount of existing misery.
 This is the fanlt-not of individ- uals-but of bad laws which may be abolished and replaced by better ones. We shall prove that bye and bye. But the men who can point out the blunders of our laws; who have investigated the causes of all social shortcomings, who devise means for extirpating them, are de- nounced as the worst enemies of so- ciety. In some countries they are tortured, hanged, shot down, and persecuted in every imaginable way. In almost all countries restricted in their freedom of speaking, teaching, printing and a'semblage, surrounded by spies, and-ghat Is worse-con- sidered by great many of the work CTS themselves as meddlesome, and hair-braine' agitators.
 But since this has been the course and curse of reformers in all ages, it does not in the least dampen the